1. Technical Field
The present invention generally relates to the generation of terms for search. More particularly, the present invention relates to generating synonyms for a term to be indexed, each of the synonyms including only part of the term.
2. Background Information
The Internet has vastly increased both the amount of information available to users and the speed with which it may be obtained. However, the vast increase in the amount of information has created a corresponding problem for users in finding the information of interest. Search engines have proliferated in an attempt to meet the information need.
However, a search engine is only as good as the information indexed for search, and the term(s) to be searched input by a user. Thus, if a user inputs, for example, only a portion of a term that would return the desired information, or misformats the term, it is less likely that the information actually being sought will be returned in the results. Although this is true for all searches, it is particularly so with respect to non-word searches, such as, for example, part numbers, model numbers and other such identifiers. Part numbers, for example, are seldom intuitive and are not formatted in any standard way. Thus, users frequently only know a portion of the actual part number and/or may add or omit non-alphanumeric characters, for example, spaces, dashes, etc.
It would be helpful if a user could more reliably search when a “perfect” term is not known or otherwise not available, particularly in the case of identifiers.
Thus, a need exists for a way to increase the accuracy of the search results even where the user only knows a portion of the information being sought and/or improperly formats the same.